Charles Dickens

1812-1870 

Lisa Zaderey  
 Early life
• February 7, 1812: Charles Dickens is born to John and Elizabeth Dickens.

• 1824: John Dickens arrested for his debts and sent to Marshalsea prison. A 12-year-old
Charles Dickens is forced to work at Warren’s Blacking Factory pasting labels on shoe polish
containers to provide for the family.

• 1833: Dickens publishes his first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Walk,” in The Monthly Magazine.

• 1836: Dickens begins monthly installments of his first novel, The Pickwick Papers. The novel
becomes a publishing phenomenon, going from selling 500 copies of the first installment to
over 40,000 of the last one in 1847.
 Early life
• 1837: Dickens’ first child, Charles Culliford Boz Dickens, is born—the first of his 10 children.
He begins publishing monthly installments of Oliver Twist. The book, beloved by factory
workers and Queen Victoria unlike, make Dickens one of the most popular writers of his times.

• 1840: Dickens begins publishing installments of The Old Curiosity Shop, which quickly becomes
the bestselling novel of its time with over 100,000 readers per issue.

• 1841: Dickens publishes Barnaby Rudge, which, while still popular, marks a notable decline in
readership, dropping to about 30,000 by its last installments.

• 1842: Dickens travels to America with his wife on a reading tour. His latest novel, Martin
Chuzzlewit, sees disappointing sales numbers.
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL
• Oct 5, 1843: During a evening walk after a fundraiser for the Manchester Athenaeum, Dickens
begins to hatch the idea for a new novel, one that will touch on the ill effects of
industrialization and the fate of children in such a world.

• October to December 1843: Dickens works furiously on A Christmas Carol. He tells a friend
that he composes much of it walking “the black streets of London… many a night when all the
sober folks had gone to bed.”

• November 1843: He hires John Leech to create the illustrations for his book and works with
him to realize his vision of the story.

• December 17, 1843: The final book has gone to the printer. Two days later, Dickens has 6,000
copies ready for bookstores.
 A CHRISTMAS CAROL
• December 19, 1843: In his review of A Christmas Carol, Charles Mackay relishes the book’s sense of joy,
writing.

• December 24, 1843: The first printing of 6,000 volumes sells out.

• January 3, 1844: The book goes into a second and third printing.

• Jan 24, 1844: The New York publishers Harper and Brothers have the first authorized US edition of A
Christmas Carol in stores – many unauthorized versions follow.

• February 5, 1844: An authorized stage production of A Christmas Carol opens. Within weeks there are seven
more unauthorized plays based on the novel in theaters throughout London.

• 1854: Dickens begins giving a series of very popular public readings of A Christmas Carol.
 Later life
• 1849: Dickens publishes David Copperfield.

• 1851: John Dickens, Charles Dickens’ father, dies.

• 1852: Dickens’ publishes Bleak House.

• 1859: Dickens publishes A Tale of Two Cities.

• 1861: Dickens publishes Great Expectations.

• 1870: Dickens began publishing his last (and unfinished) novel, 

The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

• June 9, 1870: Charles Dickens dies from a stroke.

 Facts of life
CHARLES DICKENS HAD PET RAVENS
AND KEPT THEM AROUND EVEN
AFTER THEY DIED.
CHARLES DICKENS MIGHT HAVE
HAD EPILEPSY.
CHARLES DICKENS WAS
BURIED IN WESTMINSTER
ABBEY AGAINST HIS WISHES.
CHARLES DICKENS WAS FORCED TO WORK AT A YOUNG
AGE. 
AMERICA WAS NOT CHARLES
DICKENS'S FAVORITE PLACE.
CHARLES DICKENS REVEALED
THAT HIS EARLIEST INSPIRATION
WAS LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD.
CHARLES DICKENS PUBLISHED
WORKS UNDER A PSEUDONYM. 
 Most significant works that made him famous

First novel –
Graphic novel – The Pickwick Papers
Great Expectations (1836 -1837)
(1861)

Novel –
Novella –
Oliver Twist
A Christmas Carol Autobiographical work – (1839)
(1843)
David Copperfield
(1849 to 1850)
 The setting of Dickens’ novels
Dickens was the great novelist of cities, especially London.

London is depicted at three different social levels:

• the parochial world of the workhouses,

its inhabitants belong to the lower middle class.
• the criminal world - murderers,
pickpockets living in squalid slums.
• the Victorian middle class - respectable people
believing in human dignity.
 Dickens’ characters
• Dickens shifted the social frontiers of the novel:
the 18th-century realistic upper middle-class
world was replaced by the one of the lower
orders.

• He depicted Victorian society in all its variety,

its richness and its squalor.

• An unfinished painting by R.W. Buss (1804-75)

variously known as A Souvenir of Dickens and
Dickens’s Dream. Painted 1875. Charles Dickens
Museum, London.
 Dickens’ characters
He created:

• Caricatures. He exaggerated and

ridiculed peculiar social characteristics
of the middle, lower and lowest classes.

• Weak female characters. He was on the

side of the poor, the outcast, the
working-class.
 Dickens’ themes
• Family, childhood and poverty
the subjects to which he returned
time and again.

• Dickens’s children are either innocent

or corrupted by adults.

•
• Most of these children begin in
negative circumstancesand rise to
happy endingswhich resolve the
contradictions in their life created by
the adult world.
 Dickens’ style
Dickens’s style is very rich and original.
The main stylistic features of his novels are:
• long list of objects and people.
• Adjectives used in pairs or in group of three and four.
• Several details, not strictly necessary.
• Repetitions of the same word/s and/or sentence structure.
• The same concept/s is/are expressed more than once, but with different
words.
• Use of antithetical images in order to underline the characters’ features.
• Exaggeration of the characters’ faults.
• Suspense at the end of the episodes or introduction of a sensational event to
keep the readers’ interest.
 David Copperfield (1849-1850) brief analysis

This novel is the most autobiographical of all Dickens’ novels.

Charles Dickens' David Copperfield relates the story of a

young boy's growth and development into maturity. It is
written from the point of view of the mature adult who
recounts his own obstacles and the obstacles of those around
him and how it all shaped his life and his beliefs.

In the preface the novelist wrote: “… like many fond parents,

I have in my heart a favourite child. And his name is David
Copperfield”.
 David Copperfield (1849-1850) brief analysis

• Narrative technique - a “Bildungsroman”; the protagonist,

David, functions also as narrator.
• The characters - both realistic and romantic, characterised
by a particular psychological trait.
• Atmosphere - a combination of realism and enchantment.

Themes:
• The struggle of the weak in society.
• The great importance given to strict education.
• Cruelty to children.
• The bad living conditions of the poor.
 Recommendations for reading
I recommend to read one of the best
known of Charles Dickens' stories outside
of A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist (1839)

• Dickens used his own unhappy

adolescence in the workhouse to sketch
in Oliver’s childhood under Mr Bumble
and his experience as a journalist to
report the plight of street children,
forced into pickpocketing and worse by
desperate necessity.
Additional resources to read about the author
and his works

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsVzpAN2jhY

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9dB9BZWDBU

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5czA_L_eOp4

• https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet
/article/54882-the-top-10-charles-dickens-books.html